Robert Brand has a long history with space and the moon. At the age of 17 he wired up much of the video and communications systems in Sydney Australia that brought the world the Apollo 11 video from the moon. Over many years he has been stationed at the Parkes Radio Telescope for NASA's Voyager encounters with Uranus and Neptune and ESA's Giotto encounter with Halleys Comet.
In more recent years he has been involved with World Moon Bounce activities using large dishes to bounce signals off the moon and letting children speak to others via this magic media. Robert is involved with amateur built spacecraft and launch systems. His company, is building a Global Deep Space Network using older 30m satellite dishes from around the world. He is a space entrepreneur and has been recently asked to be involved in a mainstream space mission to Mars called 'Median' designed to detect biological methane sources on Mars. He had to solve three problems to ensure that the mission could proceed for the submission: the landing method, the radio systems and the position location method on the surface. He has recently been appointed as Director of Spacecraft Communications (and Navigation) for a bid to land a rover on the moon and bring back High Definition TV.
Robert is involved in amateur radio and concentrates on the extreme side of radio technology. He is a tireless mentor of students teaching about space. He is also a strong supporter of 'Do-It-Yourself Space' talking regularly on TV, radio and conferences.
In addition to space Robert has done many of the most dangerous sporting activities on the planet, flying a variety of ultra-lights, paragliding, caving, cave diving, abseiling down the dark slots behind waterfalls and much more. He has also taken out one the top awards from the Photographic Society of America and was a guest presenter at their annual conference in the US. He is actively involved in 3D photography and uses it for scientific research.
